conuly

Current Mood: amused

somebody else is bound to pipe up "OMG! Use person first language!"

And I'm sure I've shared my opinion of person first language with you, but to recap:

It's counterproductive and, ironically, stigmatizing.
It's insulting in its very premise. (If you need to speak funny to remember that people are people, the language isn't the problem.)
With regards to autism, it's just plain silly. (How is changing my brain or yours going to keep us the same person? Absurd!)
Anyway, there probably are better things to worry about.

The last is why I rarely say anything. Honestly, silly though I find PFL to be, I don't really care. If you prefer to use it, go for it. If it can apply to you, and you want me to use it, I'll try to remember when talking to or about you. (But not about me. There, I draw the line. I think that's fair.) So long as you're being polite and respectful and understanding, I don't particularly care what words you use. I'm not going to play language cop unless you're really being offensive, in which case I'll either point out that that word is inappropriate (if you probably don't realize) or yell at you for having no manners (if you probably do).

However, if you pipe into somebody else's discussion a sanctimonious little comment about how They Are People, then all bets are off, because that's just really annoying.

Here is an editorial about a woman whose autistic child stopped speaking at two.

The language used within the editorial is pretty offensive, I'm thinking, so I'm tucking it behind a cut:

My son was gone — there was no spark in his face, no sign of life, just dead eyes.

So, dozens of comments down the line, the whole conversation has dissolved into "OMG! VACCINES!", I've left two comments or so on the subject, and here's one person who feels it's oh-so-necessary to point out "they are children* first, not a disability".

But, you know, none of the OTHER rude things said concern her at all! Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

(Also, you don't have to read the comments (and you probably don't want to, it's all same-old, same-old, very boring), but you could be a big help by commenting that you're an autistic adult, especially if you happen to be in your 50s or older. Some people are saying quite certainly that you simply don't happen to exist at all!)

*Yeah, I know. See my parenthetical.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

humantales

I'm still learning a lot about autism (Max was diagnosed with Asperger's two years ago, and my subsequent research implies he probably inherited it from me), but this is something I haven't heard yet. Could you explain Person First Language to me? Thanks!

Incidentally, I don't comment much on your posts (I don't comment much at all), but I do enjoy reading about you and your family. Your nieces, especially, are very lucky to have you.

From:

conuly

Person First Language means saying things like "he's a person with autism" instead of "he's an autistic person".

For some disabilities, this makes sense. "He uses a wheelchair" sounds normal to say.

For others, it doesn't. "He's a person with diabetes" stands out because the normal way to talk about that is to just say "he's a diabetic".

Some people argue for person first language because, after all, if you speak normally it's like you're putting the disability before the person, and after all, we're people first.

Very touching, but the end effect is to stigmatize these disabilities more. Nobody talks about "a person with beauty" instead of a "beautiful person" just because "she's a person and more than her appearance". They only use this awkward and, frankly, unnatural circumlocution for things they perceive as bad. (Try referring to somebody as "a person with homosexuality" one day or, worse, "a person who suffers from homosexuality" and see the reaction you get! And no, I don't believe you can tell if I suffer from autism or not, as you're not me.)

Furthermore, with some disabilities (differences) such as autism, it's actually insulting in and of itself. The argument is that the disability is only a small part of the person, but the way my brain works and my neurology is a huge part of me. Although I am more than that single label, that label is no less important than the label "female" or "atheist" is, and I don't use weird speech patterns to talk about that! (I'm a person with atheism who happens to be female? Forget it.)

The implication is that you could take away the autism and still leave the person, but I don't think you could. And I don't particularly mind being autistic either (though I respect the opinions of other autistics who do).

Now, if your intent is simply to be polite, I really don't care. Person first language may be misguided at times, but it's usually well-meaning and ultimately harmless. But I don't like being told, as an autistic individual, that I'm somehow wrong for speaking naturally.

(We get double irony points for the specificity of "they are children first" when of course, there are plenty of autistic adults walking around. And when there were much more offensive things to comment on, to comment on that word choice... well....)

From:

steorra

I find it interesting that people make an issue out of person-first language but don't seem to even notice that there's also a matter of noun vs. adjective/modifier language.
Saying "he's a person with diabetes", "he's a diabetic person", and "he's diabetic" all put having diabetes in a modifier position. Saying "he's a diabetic" turns it into a noun. Making something into a noun might seem to make it more of an identity characteristic and less of a descriptive characteristic; whether you think that's desirable depends on your perspective on the thing discussed.

From:

conuly

That's something to think about too :)

From:

dragonwolf

The language used within the editorial is pretty offensive, I'm thinking, so I'm tucking it behind a cut

I'll chalk it up to our profoundly different worldviews (mine being that of a "neurotypical" as far as ASD is concerned and mother, with Depression), but having seen what happens when a person regresses (be it suddenly, or slowly), and even worse, when that person knows it's happening, but is powerless to stop it, I find the line you quoted to be fitting for the author's point of view.

I don't necessarily think the author felt that her son was actually dead, but that the boy he once was was gone. Given the rest of the context, that she feels he could sense it and knew that the regression was happening, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a certain amount of depression that goes along with that regression. One thing that my husband has said before after I fell to Depression, was that he missed the light in my eyes. Combine that with the knowledge of other disorders that cause regression (namely, Alzheimer's), what a 2 year old is actually capable of understanding, and seeing disorders that cause a 180 in mental state, both from the outside and from within, it doesn't surprise me that the author saw her son that way. Nor would it surprise me if what she saw was exasperated by depression at knowing full well what was happening, but not being able to understand, or even so much as ask why.

Additionally, keep in mind, too, that your point of view is that of a person who has spent decades living with Autism and learning how to deal with it and interact with others and whatnot. The author is a neurotypical mother with what she thought was a neurtypical son until her entire world was turned upside down less than a year ago when her son started regressing (and from the article, it was pretty severe).

Call it whatever you want, but as a parent, losing the child you once knew, be it to actual death, or to a world-altering event (such as a regression to non-verbal), is the type of nightmare that every parent fears, not because the child isn't "healthy", but because the parent can't help but wonder if it's something they did to cause whatever it was that happened, even if they know intellectually that that isn't the case. A million million "what ifs" cross the mind, and replay over and over again.

What are you supposed to do when your child, who looks to you for support and understanding, looks to you, terrified about what's happening to him, and you

can't

fix it?

I don't know if you'll be able to understand what I've written, since I'm tired, and basically trying not to cry, as it seems the Little Boy Lost article is for some reason a trigger for me (hell, I don't even know if it'll be coherent to me in the morning), but I'm not trying to offend. Rather, I'm just trying to explain why the author may have wrote what she did, and that it wasn't meant to offend (and, perhaps, you're juxtaposing your own prejudices/experiences/whatever of "neurotypicals" on this author's statement?).